Adapting to excel – PwC Study

The write up “Adapting to Excel Amid Rapid Impermanence" that Isaac Gomes, Associate Editor, published in CCV of 4th March about the study made by PwC is a topical and timely warning, especially to the conservative-minded SM Church people living in the outback rural areas of Kerala.

During my stay with my son in US in September to November 2017, this topic came up during conversation. He is IIT B.Tech., IIM post graduate and is Chief Technical Officer of Zynga, USA. His heroes are Elon Musk type innovators of the and brave new world Silicon Valley. He holds views similar to and in consonance with the findings of the PwC.

Elon Musk is a South African-born Canadian American business magnate, investor, and engineer. He is the founder, CEO, and lead designer of SpaceX; co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; and co-founder and CEO of Neuralink.

Let me cite from the book “Elon Musk“ presented to me by my son on my 78th birthday: Musk’s ready willingness to tackle impossible things has turned him into a deity in Silicon Vally, just as Steve Jobs before. Silicon Valley operates within its shared fantasy. Musk is perceived by many as a well-intentioned dreamer – a card-carrying member of Silicon Vally’s techno-utopian club. This group tends to be a mix of Ayn Rand devotees and engineer absolutists who see their hyper-logical world view as the Answer for everything. They are confident of fixing all our problems. One day soon enough, they think, we’ll be able to download our brains to a computer, and relax, and let their algorithms take care of everything. Musk has plans to construct deep underground tunnels at different levels to ease traffic bottlenecks in cities like Los Angeles.The same technology will be used to create below the ground tunnels in Mars for human habitation. Musk thinks that eventually earth-like conditions will emerge in Mars. Others with similar visions are attempting to colonise the moon and the satellites of Jupiter such as Enceladus and Europa where humans may be able to live. Eventually inter-galactic travel/colonisation may become a realty. Solar power for space shuttles, transportation such as hyper-loop and other energy needed activities is on the cards. Building roofs will be made of silicon embedded tiles which will generate uninterrupted electric energy. Storing of solar power will be enabled by power walls in tandem with small sized lithium batteries. There will be paradigm shift in production technology with robots guided by artificial intelligence replacing human labour. Only a few controllers will be required to get things done. Offices will be replaced by new gadgets and systems. House maids will give way to robots. Artificial intelligence will make huge impact in the medical field. Gene splicing and other exotic modes may replace conventional pregnancy and delivery of children. Conventional marriages are on the way out in developed societies. Same sex pairings, living in arrangements have already become the order of the day in the modern set up. Human type contraptions provide sexual satisfaction to many in China even now. Sex will be pleasure-oriented in the future and meant for procreation. Other mind-boggling changes are also in the horizon.

When one surveys the level of education, knowledge and awareness of the emerging trends especially among excessively religious-oriented people in our communities, this does not indicate positive signs. The prospects of these people do not seem very bright. The tendency, when confronted with the problems of life and existence in general, make these people flock to places of worship and frantically prostrate and implore the statues or images of their God(s), along with generous offerings of money and goods, to help them to extricate out of the dire situations. They attend religious functions such as novenas, retreats, visiting of the so called holy places, climbing the various hills in the land and other acrobatics to please their favoured gods and saints with the hope of getting help to tide over the problems faced. If any particular God or Saint is found ineffective, they will hunt for new ones and repeat the process to the point of tedium. The only people happy and contented are priests and shamans and their pimps who are on the lookout for picking the pockets of the credulous.

Both Catholicism and Marxism are the two sides of the same coin. Their ploy is to keep the maximum number in intellectual and financial deprivation, ignorance, dissatisfaction and disequilibrium as control levers. Just look at the opulent life styles, huge mansions, top end vehicles and other amenities enjoyed by these leaders. Look at the reverence and deference shown to bishops and party higher-ups. It seems that the “goats” can be fooled and taken for rides indefinitely over and over again. The dumb followers/ believers seem to be firmly convinced that good times are at the end of the rainbow.

The Catholic faithful appear to believe that their woes are due to their disobedience to their God and committing of sins. The Church comes out with endless lists of ever more varieties of sins which the “goats” are prone to commit. In the register of sins, the acts of one human organ is the favourite of the church and its clerics. To get themselves absolved of the guilt, the believers undertake fasts and penances, abjure non-veg food and keep away from all types of pleasures especially sex. It seems that their God relishes meat above all other things forcing his human creations to forgo this type of food. Despite all the mortifications and self flagellations, the problems still persist. But the blind believer refuses to open his/ her eyes. No one, other than themselves can solve their problems. But the disoriented refuse to come out of their stupor. This is the reality.

People in rural areas of Kerala generally survive by subsistence farming, petty trade and jobs requiring low level skills. In the new set-up, this segment is likely to suffer most. Out of frustration they may end up as malcontents, misfits and lumpen elements menacing the communities they live in. They may resort to criminal activities such as chain snatching, peddling of narcotic drugs, pimping a.k.a. brokering.

If people have to survive in the modern world they had better make a clean break with the traditional past and its obsolete ways. Economic activities including methods of production and organisation of society require convergence with the ever-changing paradigms. Otherwise there is likely to be more asymmetries in the level of knowledge and lifestyle for vast segments of humanity’s less developed regions, which in Hindi are called “langadas’ or some such term?

Note from Isaac:

Mr Varghese Pamplanil, a rich reservoir of knowledge, can be contacted at: ​pamplanil@icloud.com

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